The Pierce County Prosecutor last week charged a 43-year-old Auburn man, Thien Hoai Nguyen, with the third-degree child molestation of a 14-year-old girl in Pierce County during the early morning hours of Aug. 1.

Here’s what happened, according to the Auburn Police Department’s determination of probable cause.

The girl told police that on Aug. 1 2016, while she was staying the night at a friend’s apartment, she woke on the couch at 2:44 a.m. to find her sweatpants down to her ankles and Nguyen next to her, “grabbing her buttocks area, skin to skin, in a sensual massage manner.”

According to the report, Nguyen then reached between the girl’s legs and began to touch her groin. Confused and scared, she told police, she got up and entered a bedroom, but Nguyen followed and began to “spoon” her on the bed. She told him she needed to use her cellphone and returned to the living room, where she lay down on the floor. But according to the report, Nguyen followed her and asked if she could talk.

“Would it be weird if I told you I liked you?” Nguyen asked, according to the report.

It would be illegal, she replied, noting that she was 14.

“But you’re so mature,” Nguyen responded, according to the report. When she reminded him that she was 14, he allegedly told her, “So, we did not have this conversation.”

When the girl found her phone, she went into the bathroom to call her mother, but the phone was dead. She returned to the living room and lay down again on the couch, she told police, where Nguyen again put his arm around her and said, “You know, we really love you.”

At that point, the girl said, she left all her belongings and ran to her apartment in the same complex. When she got there, according to the report, she texted a friend about what had happened.

On Aug. 16, 2016, the victim’s mother notified police she had learned that the father of one of her daughter’s friends had molested her daughter.

When police contacted Nguyen, he said he remembered the night of the incident but denied anything had happened and denied touching her inappropriately. He said he remembered that when the apartment woke up, she was already gone, but that he did not know why she had left so early. He added that family members had told him in the past that he sometimes sleep walks, and he takes a low dose of Ambien each night to help him fall asleep.